Voice over IP (VoIP) is a technological development in the field of telecommunications that is utilized to establish and provide voice communications over a data network using the Internet Protocol (IP). Entities (e.g., businesses or individuals) implement VoIP by purchasing and installing the necessary equipment (e.g., one or more Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices) and service (i.e., a “high speed” network or broadband connection) to access a VoIP service provider and activating this telecommunication service. Since VoIP is a relatively new technology in terms of its commercial penetration, it has yet to completely supplant the existing and traditional telecommunications system more commonly referred to as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). This is particularly notable in the wireless telecommunications space where cellular telephones, towers and satellites have augmented the “reach” of the PSTN beyond traditional land lines by operating according to wireless communications protocols such as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and the like. Accordingly, there is a huge amount of existing PSTN equipment that entities are reluctant to completely abandon for economic and strategic reasons. To further complicate matters, VoIP-based devices and existing PSTN-based devices are not compatible; thus, an entity desiring to exploit VoIP in a wireless environment would have to purchase additional equipment having the appropriate communications protocols such as IEEE 802.11 (also known as Wi-Fi).
To address this shortcoming, mobile telephones containing both cellular and non-cellular radios used for voice and data communication have been developed. Such dual mode phones use cellular radio which will contain GSM/CDMA/W-CDMA (normal and/or wideband code division multiple access) as well as other technology like (Wi-Fi) radio or DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) radio. These phones can be used as cellular phones when connected to a wide area cellular network and, when within range of a suitable WiFi or DECT network, these phones can be used as a WiFi/DECT phones for all communications purposes. This dual mode of operation capability can reduce cost (for both the network operator and the subscriber), improve indoor coverage and increase data access speeds. However, a VoIP-capable dual mode telephone must be provisioned using methods beyond the out-of-band methods used by the cellular network. A configuration file (part of the provisioning process) contains the necessary information to provision a VoIP-capable phone with the basic operational parameters to connect to a broadband network, register with the VoIP service provider and complete telephone calls as well as setting default attributes for various selectable functions and options. Since charges (either in the form of a pre-paid minute budget or actual monetary units per connection period) are incurred for accessing a GSM or similar network, it is not desirable to spend such time accessing the GSM network for the purpose of updating or otherwise maintaining a VoIP configuration file. Additionally, if an updated configuration file becomes available while the telephone is in a GSM environment (as opposed to a WiFi environment), signaling the telephone of the availability of such updated configuration file is not economical because there is no direct access to the VoIP service provider.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for optimizing both WiFi and GSM type networks in a dual mode telephone for the purposes of provisioning same so as to reduce the operational cost of the associated communications service and improve the user experience.